Product Description

Spirituality is tangled inexorably with power and patriarchy for Tori Amos. On Amos' third solo record, the Hawaiian volcano goddess Pele serves as her alter-ego, presenting a threat to Amos' ever-present, menacing father figures. On "Muhammad My Friend", she warns, "I know you've seen fire/But you've never seen fire/Until you've seen Pele blow". Amos is equally intrigued by other strong, angry females--on "Twinkle", she admires "a girl twice as hard" who reportedly killed aman.
In contrast to her words, Amos tends toward restrained, ethereal vocals; they occasionally verge on ferocity but never quite make it all the way. Her piano and harpsichordplaying is, by turns, delicate and passionate. Contrasts like those between confessional and enigmatic lyrics, and between an underlying sense of anger and a voice that holds backfrom truly expressing it, create an electric tension throughout BOYS FOR PELE.
PELE is the first record Amos has self-produced, and it branches out from her previous work, exploring more loosely structured songwriting and experimenting with the use of strings, brass and a gospel choir.

Track Listing

1. Horses
2. Blood roses
3. Father Lucifer
4. Professional widow
5. Professional widow (Amands star truck funkin mix)
6. Mr Zebra
7. Marianne
8. Caught a lite sneeze
9. Muhammad my friend
10. Hey Jupiter
11. Way down
12. Little Amsterdam
13. Talula
14. Not the Red Baron
15. Agent Orange
16. Doughnut song
17. Putting the damage on
18. Twinkle

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8961 in Music
• Released on: 1997-01-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks

Customer Reviews

One of my all-time favourites
Buy this album and get to hear a true artist at her most imaginative. I believe this is Tori's finest work. 'Hey Jupiter' is possibly the sweetest thing I've ever heard. Part of me fell in love with Tori after hearing that beautiful song; it still stops me dead everytime. But there are lots of wonderful things on here. You may have to give it time to work it's magic but if it clicks with you it'll still be making you sigh for many years to come.

I actually have the proper version of this album with 'Springtime of his Voodoo' instead of the dance remix of 'Professional Widow'. If you can get hold of the proper one, do!

Amos' baroque epic: intense, fiery, and challenging
After a dramatic entrance with the hugely accessible and impacting Little Earthquakes in 1992, followed by the more classical-influenced and enigmatic Under the Pink two years later, Tori Amos pushed her solo, acoustic performer persona to the limit on her third opus, the epic Boys for Pele, before going on to experiment with rhythms and effects on subsequent records.

Pele, recorded during 1995 in an Irish church in County Wicklow, with further work done at a Georgian house, is suitably baroque and takes Amos' penchant for twisting, unconventional melodies and vivid metaphor to new extremes for the most intense and bloodletting of her records. That's not to say that it's a loud and raucous listen, although it is full of some of her more freeform singing, but the passionate emotion is palpable through her inspired lyrics and loose performances. This is not a staged, rehearsed record, and you get the feeling that there are plenty of first-takes here, such is its raw intensity.

It's the most diverse but impenetrable of her "holy trinity" of largely solo works, and has its own very distinctive intense atmosphere throughout. If you were to hear these songs stand alone, you would definitely be able to tell that it was Pele-era. Vocally, Amos is breathy and loose throughout, and often improvises. Her keyboard playing is superb, as on the predecessor Under the Pink, and she introduces harmonium and clavichord (briefly) to her repertoire, but the main new addition is the harpsichord, which is part of what lends Pele its distinctive baroque flavour. Her harpsichord melodies could come straight from the 18th century, and particularly on the utterly spellbinding burst of fire and fury that is Blood Roses, she sounds world-class.

As ever, the lyrics are alternately emotional, sexy, and funny, and there's a heavy dose of unusual metaphor here too. Amos is not a standard lyricist, and her lyrics do require a deal of mining to understand them. But her lyrics are conveyed with such emotion, passion, and conviction that you can get the gist of what she means by her tone and her delivery. A big theme of the record is the empowerment of women, but another is the break-up from her producer boyfriend Eric Rosse after eight years; she takes on sole production duties here.

Pele features a trove of killer, emotional ballads that feature gorgeous string arrangements ("Marianne") and mournful brass ("Putting the Damage On"), and there are also some semi-improvised interludes like the whimsical "Agent Orange," the gospel choir-fuelled "Way Down," and the jaunty highlight "Mr. Zebra." Then there's her quota of bewitching piano epics, of which "Horses" is the beautiful highlight, and then her 'pop' songs - but "Talula" and "Caught a Lite Sneeze" are not conventional pop, with their harpsichord riffs, unusual arrangements, and unconventional structures. Still, the melodies are memorable and take surprising twists and turns.

Pele also features more of a bluesy, Southern sound than before, particularly on the dark and sinister "Little Amsterdam" and strange, wide-eyed concoction "In the Springtime of His Voodoo," unfortunately ommitted from later pressings in favour of a dance remix of the sordid baroque "Professional Widow." Musically, Amos uses her piano and harpsichord here both as singer/songwriter and rock/blues tools, showing her versatility as a keyboardist. The array of musical styles and textures is hugely impressive, and arrangement-wise, Amos brings in an odd soundworld of gospel choirs, brass band, bagpipes, and drum effects to colour her imaginative, evocative songs.

Boys for Pele is perhaps not the best entry into the Tori Amos canon, but it features a substantial quota of her best-loved and most original, innovative material. There's a strong case for this as one of the most important albums of the singer-songwriter idiom, but because of its intensity, adventurous arrangements and performances, and unconventional sound, it's often maligned as 'weird' or 'unfocused.' The passion and intent, though, is unmistakable, and Amos herself has said that she finds it difficult to listen to but it was vital to her development as an artist and as a woman. Don't just listen to it once - as with all Amos albums, they need repeated listening and then they will become a friend for life.

Beautiful
I first fell in love with this album about 7 years ago when I was 14, after seeing her perform an utterly compelling live show. Tori's talent for conveying emotion both vocally and at the piano is superb, but this is both a blessing and a curse if the listener isn't prepared for it, as her raw and un-masked emotion can at times be so overbearing and honest that you want to shut it out.

However, in no way is that criticism - because if you're prepared to open up a little then it becomes far more than the scrapbook of surface memories which so many other albums turn out like, but a beautifully crafted, frank and deeply personal account of her feelings and thoughts which effortlessly draws the audience in. You really feel as if you have stepped into her soul when listening to this album, and the experience is a very emotional one, though there are often moments where you're rewarded for reflecting rather than letting your heart take the reigns.

While there's no obvious concept or theme to the album, you quickly get the sense that it's about loss of innocence and the effect it has on her as well as the people around her, and as such the songs jump from jolly and playful to dark and sombre, but there's no incoherence or anything that feels particularly out of place (apart from the dance remix of "Professional Widow" - it's of debatable worth, but it's obviously a choice made by the record company rather than the artist herself). I really can't describe the music any more than that - the album is beautiful, but that can only mean so much without experiencing it for yourself.